


the resilience of cosmos

by borage (haechansheaven)



Series: oikawa week 2020 [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Day 2: Revelations, Falling In Love, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Oikawa Week 2020, Past Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Past Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, Past Nishinoya Yuu/Oikawa Tooru, Past Relationship(s), Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25320865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haechansheaven/pseuds/borage
Summary: Cosmos bloom from midsummer to the first frost if they are cared for properly. The wilted petals that collect in the corner of Tooru’s apartment are a bright, vibrant pink.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Oikawa Tooru
Series: oikawa week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1832464
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51
Collections: Oikawa Week 2020





	the resilience of cosmos

**Author's Note:**

> for oikawa week 2020, day 2: revelations
> 
> **note** : as stated, this is (theoretically) post-canon. hinata-is-a-professional-volleyball-player-in-brazil post-canon. there is the slightest hint of oikawa/ushijima if you dig a little into it.

It’s not like anyone sets out to get their heart broken. Tooru didn’t wake up one morning and think, _Yes, right, it is finally the time to saddle myself with regrets_. His life has already been full of enough of those. This situation, however, is balanced on a sharp edge. It is something dangerous. Tooru loves danger in a controlled sort of way. All of this is beyond the reach of his command.

You see, things tend to crumble to pieces in his hands. Even with a gentle touch, remnants sift through his fingers and fall to the ground. No matter how many times he drops to his knees, packing the dust back into a tangible shape, it always falls apart again in the end. Triangles, rectangles, squares, every shape under the sun. Nothing lasts long enough.

Hajime was a pillar in Tooru’s life and, yes, it is unfair. He’s quick to admit that much. It’s unfair to refer to Hajime in the _past_ , rather than the _present_ , because he still _is_. He still exists, whether it be at the periphery or the center of Tooru’s life. Even across an ocean, even plane rides away, Hajime is Tooru’s, and Tooru is Hajime’s. It’s what that _means_ that has changed.

Somewhere, along the line, the delineation began to change, and Tooru realized that he _loved_ Hajime.

It goes a little something like this: Tooru wakes up, stares at himself in the mirror, hears Hajime call his name outside of his window, feels his heart skip a beat, and thinks, _Ah, I couldn’t live without him_. Not the usual sort of, _I really don’t know what I’d do without Hajime_ , but a newfound sort of, _I’d like to see what we can do, together, for the rest of our lives_.

And, well, that’s that, Tooru thinks, at first, because, that _is_ that. In a way, it feels somewhat… unimportant. Wanting to spend more time—more than he’s already been given—by Hajime’s side isn’t really an epiphany of any sort. It’s always been them against the world. Tooru doesn’t realize how wrong he is until they begin to walk separate paths.

(Tooru’s thoughts spin in circles again and again and again and time doesn’t make sense anymore and when he sleeps, everything merges together and the Tooru of the past stares the Tooru of the present dead in the eye and says, “This is your grave, now lay in it.”

And Tooru does. He rests his body on a bed of daisies and thinks that this would be a nice place to rest.

And then he wakes up.)

This is where Shoyou Hinata comes in, filling a gap that Tooru didn’t know he had, stretching himself to fit a mold that didn’t work before making a place of his own. It takes time, and Tooru learns that first he needs to break his heart before it can be fixed. Falling in love is something really nice if you let yourself fall. And Tooru did, Hajime’s hand in his.

Distance isn’t some unsurmountable thing, and Tooru knows that, if he forced it, they could’ve made it. But something about that felt _wrong_. Something about that felt _unfair_ to the both of them, who relied and craved physical contact more than either of them were comfortable admitting. There is a time, and there is a place, where they are still together, and Tooru finds some sort of comfort in that.

Hajime is still in his life, farther than he was before, but no farther than the start, and that’s nice. Everything is nice, Tooru thinks.

That was a dream, and this is a reality, but dreams pull from real life. Tooru’s heart has been broken and, these days, it is held in gentle hands that keep it safe and warm.

Tooru comes to the decision on a Thursday afternoon where the rain won’t stop and everything in their lives have changed for the better. The concept of chasing dreams was never something that they failed to understand. It was the execution, the motivation, that would find itself at a standstill every so often. Sometimes, Hajime’s words still echo in his head. Sometimes at good times, and sometimes at bad, and Tooru still struggles to define the difference between the two.

Hajime had told him that, “Being mature isn’t the same thing as being wise.” And Tooru had taken those words to heart, written them down on a piece of paper he keeps tucked into his wallet. His teammates tell him that’s not the kind of thing you do with something from your ex-boyfriend, and Tooru thinks, well, sure, but this is _Hajime_ we’re talking about, not someone who’s left his life behind.

They may not be _together_ , but they’re surely not apart. Hajime is an unmovable pillar in his life.

Shoyou gets it, anyways, and that’s all that really matters. He laughs and laughs and nods before saying, “Iwaizumi is cool like that, isn’t he? He says things that make you think, ‘Right, shouldn’t I have already known that?’ But he says it in a way that, like, makes you realize that it’s only cool because _he_ said it.” His hands move around as he speaks and his eyes sparkle, and, yeah.

Shoyou gets it.

“Right.”

“Plus,” Shoyou rummages through his bag before waving his phone around, “I got this case from Kageyama. And that’s a little weird, too, isn’t it?”

Tooru laughs. “We’re all a little weird.”

They’re all a little broken and a little fucked up. None of them know how to properly navigate anything, really, but that’s fine. Shoyou’s hand in his feels warm, and that’s enough to pull Tooru’s mind from the depths and back to the surface. Here he can breathe a little easier, relax a little more, and contemplate his next move.

First loves aren’t the same as second loves, or third loves, and it’s never that you love anyone any less. Tooru cannot say that he loves Shoyou less than he loved Hajime, because love is never the same. The amount may not change, but the essence of it will. His love for Hajime was borne from repetition and familiarity. The love he fosters for Shoyou is built from self-discovery and change.

“Well, sure.” Shoyou knocks his feet together, attention temporarily drifting towards the television which shows a match being broadcast from Italy. If they lean forward enough, hold their breath enough, they can see _KAGEYAMA_ on the back of an Ali Roma jersey, a reminder of the past in a multitude of ways. “We’ve all been in love.”

Across the court, in an Orzel Warszawa jersey, Wakatoshi Ushijima stands tall.

“Indeed, we have.”

After a month of living on his own, Tooru buys himself a fish. It’s weak, and it was on sale, and Tooru is careful as he changes the water, feeds it, watches it in the light of his bedside lamp when he can’t sleep. Regardless, it dies. It dies because it was weak and sick and, no matter what Tooru did, nothing could save it.

(That’s probably a metaphor for something about life, but Tooru never knew how to give up, no matter the circumstances. He thinks that, even on his deathbed, he’ll be clawing his way to the top, breathing in all the oxygen at the summit.)

He decides on a plant, next, because plants don’t come with the looming threat of emotional attachment. Tooru doesn’t know if it’ll make him feel less empty, but he buys one, regardless. They’re pink cosmos that sit in the sunny corner of Tooru’s apartment. Caring for them fills Tooru with a casual sense of purpose. It’s something, but not the same sort of feeling that drives him to move faster, work harder on the court.

They leave for exhibition matches in the middle of July, and Tooru, whose companions are all on the team, cannot find anyone to water his flowers when he leaves. His neighbors, after all this time, are still strangers that stare at the foreigner who represents their country in matches with a sense of overwhelming awe. In a way, the expectation and burdens feel like too much. In another way, they feel like just another.

When he returns two weeks later, they’re still alive and blooming, silently welcoming him home.

Tooru likes to think that he’s a bit resilient like that, too. It takes him another year to realize it’s true.

Cosmos bloom from midsummer to the first frost if they are cared for properly. The wilted petals that collect in the corner of Tooru’s apartment are a bright, vibrant pink.

Even in death, they shimmer.

Throughout his life, Tooru has come to a multitude of realizations. Of them all, this is the most important: Learning to stand in a world on his own, even when he feels so, so lonely. It is this new Tooru Oikawa, hardened and something of a hastily stitched together person, that learns to stand on his own two feet. He knows more, he’s lived through more, he can do more.

Somewhere along the way, though, he’s lost himself, and it’s a struggle to find the fragments and glue them back together. If people are gardens, Tooru’s is empty. All the flowers have bloomed and died, and, in this winter, there’s nothing left. The dirt is dry, nitrogen, necessary for growth, taken by the plants that have lived and died.

However, in the house, hidden among the trees, is a planter full of orchids, carefully cultivated, on the verge of dying. Tooru, carefully, replaces the plants, replaces the soil, and replants cosmos, bright pink and bright enough to open up the house.

People learn these lessons at different points in their life. Tooru, one day, stumbles upon Yuu Nishinoya, whose smile is so wide it threatens to swallow the horizon and become the only source of light. For a moment he is, though it’s brief, rolling in and out of the sheets before propelling himself to the next stage in his life. He moves without hesitation and Tooru can’t remember when he was last like that.

Perhaps when he was five, or ten, and thinking that volleyball looks _fun_ , it looks _different_ , it looks _exciting_.

“You can’t let life scare you.” Yuu laughs loud and it fills up Tooru’s apartment. He thinks even his flowers stand taller at the sound. “If you let things scare you, you can’t _live_. If you’re scared all the time, you’ll never challenge yourself.”

He leaves as quickly as he came, a human hurricane, leaving an organized mess behind him.

(Takahiro had laughed at that comparison with a bit of wonder in his voice, and Tooru had asked, “What?! What’s so funny, Makki?”

“Because,” Takahiro had said, gasping for breath, “you’re something of a hurricane in your own right, you know that?”)

When he’s gone, Tooru rests on his knees and begins to turn the dirt in his garden, plucking the weeds and composting them beside the house. It’s a slow process, but he’s determined to do this on his own, in his own way. Little by little, his garden blooms again and the sun shines on his plot of land and the house between the trees is illuminated by thousands of flowers.

There’s still more work to be done, though.

Tooru still misses Hajime in a way he shouldn’t sometimes. It comes once in a blue moon, when he sees something that reminds him of those days that are hundreds of pages back. And Shoyou holds him through those moments. He thinks about them, understands them, and waits for Tooru to bring himself back to the present.

Everything comes together in the form of a night on the beach and rediscovering himself. It’s not _that_ profound, and it’s a little embarrassing, but Tooru thinks that it happened, it was meant to happen, and he’s glad that it happened.

On a Wednesday night in Brazil, Tooru thinks to himself that this trip is just the same, it’s all the same, and monotony has its own role in life. The sand looks somewhat inviting until a phantom pain in his knee screams and Tooru remembers how many things he’s sacrificed to get here, considers how big of a sacrifice it’ll be to walk on water again.

It is there, under streetlamps, that he sees Shoyou Hinata again and re-learns what it means to love. He tells Hajime this one day, that he thinks he might be falling for someone, again, and it feels confusing and scary and _weird_ , and Hajime, with bags under his eyes and a coffee in hand, tells Tooru, “Get over yourself and let yourself love them, then.”

And, right. Tooru can do this.

Shoyou smiles up at him, a little bit shy, a little bit bashful, a little bit lost, and Tooru thinks that he could get used to this, loving someone on a coast, feet sinking into the sand, the sun and the moon trading places with a sort of reverence for one another. Shoyou shines bright like the sun and Tooru, a wilting cosmos, takes a breath and realizes that everything is going to be fine.


End file.
